Small Wins in Patient Care

I think you have to understand where your patient's coming from and for me I think our patients are so overwhelmed by information and advice from healthcare professionals so you have to think about what your immediate goals are and you've got to work with small wins. So if it's something as simple as I need them to reduce their activity because they've got a foot wound or a foot condition that requires that they limit their activity so that they can get healing or so that we can have some protection or whatever, then it's about negotiating around that, especially if they are incredibly active or if they're working. So it's about, okay, how can we help you? Do we need to write to your GP? Do we need to write to work? But this is the reason why we need you to understand why you shouldn't be walking, shouldn't be doing this particular activity or why we need you to use a certain type of footwear or accommodative device. Another example I can give you is if we've got patients who've got significantly poor control on their diabetes and they just can't get on top of that. So it might be where we would need to have and see the diabetes specialist nurse in parallel to our appointment. So they'll see us and see the nurse after us. And it's maybe just about something as small as tweaking an insulin dose by two units or something and trying that. It's really small things that you change. It might look like a small win initially, but it's getting somebody to understand and be confident about these sorts of things. People who are afraid of using needles, and so getting them to overcome that anxiety and fear and phobia about using insulin or administering insulin. So whilst it seems like small things, in the bigger picture it is quite a big win for the patient. So it is just about targeting the small things and doing manageable things for the person that works for them and don't overwhelm them because if patients feel overwhelmed and you just barrage them with a lot at one time, they actually become a bit afraid because it's so overwhelming for them. So as healthcare professionals, we need to always take that step back, understand where the person's coming from and understand what their anxieties and fears are about what's going on, about their condition, their management, what's worrying them imminently. There are some things we can't help them with. There are things where we would need to direct them to other agencies. But the things that we can do, we need to do them in small bite-sized chunks so that they can see the wins for themselves and also so that they can get on board slowly but surely with that and actually make the lifestyle change. Because in actual fact, when they see the small wins and they realize it's to their benefit and that it's not as difficult as they thought it was, it makes it that much easier to implement it did what I mean so so so I think we have to try and be a bit realistic about that and practical